The amount of commerce being conducted on the Internet is exploding. Both business to business (B2B) and business to consumer (B2C) transactions are more popular than ever in large part due to the conveniences and benefits available through the use of the Internet to process transactions. Advertising is one service that is particularly well suited for the Internet. There are a multitude of companies that offer advertising through websites, bulletin boards, email and other technologies associated with the Internet.
There are various business processes associated with the operation and maintenance of an advertising service on the Internet. For example, an operator of such a service must make its service availability known to potential customers. This can be done through traditional advertising, web-based advertising, partnerships, co-branding relationships and other ways. In addition, once a large number of listings are obtained, the operator must be in a position to bill for the listings preferably on an automated basis. It is desirable for the billing function to include a way to collect, monitor and credit payments made on account.
In many cases, it is also desirable for a service operator to provide for automatic renewals of advertising services. Automatic renewals provide a way for the operator to achieve incremental revenue from entities and/or individuals that have shown a propensity to take advantage of the advertising services offered by the operator. In addition to advertising, the operator may want to make available other services and/or product offerings which may or may not be related to the context of the advertising. Since demographic information concerning advertisers and possibly potential respondents is often captured by the operator, targeted offerings may be made available and are often successful.
There exist techniques for automatically renewing advertisements and making offers available through the Internet. One typical scenario involves an advertiser or other user navigating to the operator's website and providing information which usually includes an email address. Once the user signs up for an advertisement or other service, renewal may be accomplished and offerings may be made via the generation (either manually or automatically) of an email which is sent to a specified email address. Typically, the email message contains a “subject line” which contains information specific to the offer or, in the case of the renewal of advertising, the advertiser's advertisement. Often times, this subject line is composed of a cryptic string of numbers and letters which are coded to reflect the offer or advertisement. The email may also contain a message to the user asking whether he or she is interested in renewing the advertisement or accepting a particular offer. If the user is interested, he or she is instructed to reply to the message by selecting the “reply to” button on their internet browser application. By doing so, the user is causing an email with the pre-designated subject line to be sent to a particular email address which is typically controlled by the operator. In most cases capability is provided such that upon receipt of this reply email by the operator, a software application or similar functionality can process the renewal or offer acceptance automatically.
Unfortunately, this procedure suffers from some drawbacks. First, since the subject line is accessible to and may be manipulated by the user, there is the potential for the user to either accidentally or intentionally manipulate the response so as to create an error. For example, if the user were to change a digit in a string of characters, it could cause a processing error when received by the service provider and this, in turn could result in a lost sale, customer dissatisfaction and/or a dispute. A second consequence resulting from the accessibility of the subject line is the possibility for a security breach. If a user can figure out the “code”, it is possible that the user could intentionally cause processing errors in order to defraud the system and/or cause it to crash. In addition, some email application programs (e.g. Eudora and Microsoft Outlook) may be configured to automatically modify a subject line in connection with a reply email. By way of example, these applications may automatically modify the subject line when a reply is made by inserting a character string such as “re:” followed by the original subject line. As mentioned above, such a modification can present problems in connection with prior art systems that rely on the string contained in the subject line.
Another drawback of the prior art systems and methodologies is that there exist significant problems in the case where a user may maintain more than one email account. In such a case, when an email is automatically generated and sent to a user, the user's origination “from address” may not be recognized (and thus the transaction will not be properly processed) if the user replies from an email account which is not the same as the one initially specified in the registration process.
Another specific benefit of advertising (or in any proposed business transaction) in the Internet context which may be made available to users is the ability for each of the parties to a potential transaction to communicate with each other regarding the potential transaction. For example, an advertiser may list a certain office space for rent through an Internet service. Once posted, one or more individuals may view the advertisement and some or all of those viewing the advertisement may be interested in exploring further. By way of example, a potential renter viewing a rental listing may obtain the landlord's email address from the listing, send the landlord an email including questions about the property and await a response. Following that, the landlord may or may not respond to the interested party by sending a reply email.
In some situations, this procedure does not present problems. However, there are certain situations where advertisers and/or those responding to listing may wish to preserve their confidentiality. For example, an employer may wish to list a new position as a “blind” listing such that nobody knows who the company is and/or what the position is until such time as the employer wishes to disclose such information. Further, a potential employee may wish to maintain the confidentiality of his or her identity until such time as he or she wishes to disclose such information. This is often not possible or is very difficult once email addresses are disclosed.
Thus, while internet based advertising and other web sites have come a long way towards user convenience and usability, some aspects of the related transactions still suffer from various problems including those related to security, confidentiality and convenience.